Dissatisfaction
by mrasaki
Summary: Sometimes Leonard just needed a cigarette. Angst warning. -Kirk/McCoy-


Dissatisfaction

By mrasaki

completed 11/06/09

Word count: ~2724

Notes: Not my usual. Warnings for dark!fic, though perhaps not as dark as others. Was just trying something different, this time. Oh--and cigarette kink.

***************

Sometimes Leonard just needed a fucking cigarette.

He didn't let on about it, because smoking wasn't something that people really _let on about_ nowadays, even though it was still legal despite earnest attempts to stamp it out during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He'd picked up the habit in undergrad, drinking and alcohol going hand in hand, and had remained a not-exactly-heavy smoker until Joanna, but it wasn't something he looked back on with any nostalgia. Most of the time he didn't even think about it.

The little girl was just about Joanna's age. It happened so quickly; he heard a loud screech and then a horrifying thump, and he turned to see her tumbling and coming to rest like a limp rag doll. It wasn't one of his hospital days so he wasn't carrying anything even remotely resembling medical equipment; he gave her CPR and tried to apply pressure, but there was only so much he could do. The peals of her mother's screams shattered harsh reality into his ears and kept him from retreating into the detachment of trained medical practicalities, his movements seeming caught in a nightmare of molasses, sluggish and entirely too slow to help even as he cursed and sweated.

The girl had died before emergency services could arrive. He made himself to go his seminar anyway. He arrived over an hour late, blood still spotting his shirt and cuffs, the slackness of her ruined little face still in his mind's eye.

He met Jim later; Jim's mouth was also set into grim lines, and it turned out Jim had also had a comparably shitty day in the form of the Kobayashi Maru. It was the first time he'd failed anything at Academy, and there was something hard and brittle in his face that dried whatever sarcastic banter Leonard would have tried to jolly him out of his mood with, if Leonard hadn't been in a similar gloom too. Leonard said nothing instead, and they sat along the railing in front of their dorm building, silence heavy between them as evening fell. From there it was only an abbreviated step to just as wordlessly finding a taxi uptown.

But Jim wasn't in the mood to stay hunched over the bar, nursing a drink and hoping to imbibe enough alcohol—the cheap stuff, because drinking enough to obliterate thought and memory took quite a hit on the wallet—to just let everything slide away. He never got as blackly drunk as Leonard though, instead preferring to salve his own woes with the arguably more satisfying, mind-numbing bliss of anonymous sex. Leonard hadn't told Jim what was bothering him, only that he'd had the mother of all bad days, so it wasn't long before Jim was lost into the crowd and the hazy, strobing gloom, following the siren call of a well endowed brunette and her giggling and equally scantily clad friends. Leonard sighed. It wasn't like he'd expected Jim, who was eternally distracted by soft, bouncy things, to stick around and keep his old ass company when he hadn't explicitly told him he kinda sorta wanted him to.

Ah—hell. The alcohol wasn't working, the flirtations and laughter around him just serving to make him more depressed, so he paid and stepped outside for a breath of air.

When Leonard needed a cigarette, he thought wistfully of the pack he'd stashed carefully in a box up on the shelf in the closet, much like one would hide a gun. It was years old and probably stale beyond the possibility of smoking, but its presence was still somehow a comfort and a reminder him that he didn't need that crutch anymore. But as he let the door slam shut behind him and moved past the hulking bouncer, the familiar twinge of smoke came drifting to him, heavy and instantly alluring. Before he could stop himself and let the higher orders of his brain that'd survived the alcohol soaking recall him back to sense, he followed it around the corner like Hansel and Gretel following a trail of crumbs. Fuck it. He needed this tonight, needed something. He'd save the guilt for after.

Jim found him ten minutes later. Leonard had bummed a smoke and a light in the instant camaraderie born of shared socially disapproved habits, and was smoking under the street light alone. His previous companions had long since departed for other parts and other bars. He had little idea of the picture he made under the astringent light that threw the angled planes of his face and the folds of his clothes into stark, yellow and black contrast, picking out the highlights of his cheekbones, the line of his nose, the little glints of his eyelashes as he blinked. The ember of the cigarette flared as he inhaled, illumining the intentness of his face as he stared at his comm checking his messages, lost in thought. He held the cigarette between two lean fingers, absently using his thumb to flick off ashes as smoke curled from his mouth in slow trails and tangled in his eyelashes, before vanishing into the chill air.

He jerked a bit in surprise when he saw Jim watching him, and made as if to hide the cigarette before deciding that Jim had seen what he'd seen. "Where'd Jessica Rabbit and all her little friends go?" he asked, taking the offensive but with no real heat behind the words. He deliberately put the cigarette to his lips and inhaled, watching Jim's eyes narrow and darken as they followed the movement. Jim's lips parted, then closed again, like he was about to say something but changed his mind. "You smoke now?" Jim asked, low and hoarse. Leonard braced himself for the usual twaddle of _You'll get cancer_ or the classic, _Ironic for a doctor to smoke, isn't it? _and readied his own retort, which would likely involve some choice four-letter words that started with _f,_ and ended in _off_.

But Jim didn't follow it up with any nagging, and just continued to regard him with that odd heat that was almost physical against Leonard's face until Leonard turned his eyes uncomfortably back down to the cigarette pinched in his fingers. "No," he replied finally, dropping the butt after a final drag. He ground it under his heel before picking it up and throwing it at a trash receptacle. He held the smoke in his mouth and lungs like a chocolate addict memorizing the taste in the face of a long diet; the heat of it burned his throat, the heady rush oddly unfamiliar, but the taste of it rich and ashen at the back of his tongue. He released it in a long plume as he spoke again. "Quit seven years ago. Kinda needed it today." He wasn't going to justify himself to Jim, not today.

"Christ, Bones, you—" Jim was shaking his head, up against Leonard's side like a brand in two steps and he tilted his face, rising on his toes, and Leonard met him with half-lidded eyes and a hand sliding down Jim's arm to his thin wrist, and Jim drew the last vestiges of smoke into his mouth with an open-mouthed inhale against Leonard's mouth. Jim tasted of liquor and smelled faintly of perfume under the tobacco and ashes that still lingered in Leonard's nose, evidence that perhaps his previous attempted conquest hadn't fallen quite flat. "So damn hot," Jim breathed warm against his lips, puffing the faint smoke back at him, hands hard against the open flap of his jacket and twining in the ends of Leonard's scarf that draped over his chest. Leonard shivered against the click of sharp teeth against his, muffled against moistened lips and slick tongue. Normally he'd protest against Jim coming to him so soon after one of his liaisons, still languid from orgasm and reeking of musk and sex and something floral, a smudge of lipstick visible on the corner of his mouth, but the alcohol had caught up to Leonard by then and was burning in his veins so he just cupped Jim's face, fingertips icy against Jim's flushed cheek, and roughly wiped the mark off with his thumb.

There was an intensity, a slow burn to it that was different from the other times. The kiss almost hurt, less a caress and more a smearing, with saliva and invading tongue and the dangerous scrape of teeth against vulnerable flesh, all overlaid with the flavor of smoke and a raw urgency that was new to his experience with Jim that occupied the void beyond _friends-with-benefits_, wedged between _just fucking_ and _making love_. He pulled Jim in tight, fitting himself into the hard angles of Jim's hips and the flat plane of his belly, and he hissed, dragging his lips and cheek up along Jim's temple at the sure way Jim inserted a thigh between his and gripped his hips hard with both hands, driving against him with deliberate eagerness.

Eventually he grew aware that they were making out in the street under the illumined circle of a streetlight for all passersby to see, and he manhandled Jim across the sidewalk to the wall and from there they stumbled into a shadowed alley. It was possibly the least romantic place Leonard had ever fucked in, but he barely noticed the trash and the rank smell of urine over the grit of the wall under his back as Jim pressed him against it with urgency shouting from every line of his body. Jim had always been a considerate lover before, but there was no vestige of that tenderness now in the hard clench of his hands in Leonard's thick hair, tugging and yanking Leonard's head forward into a dragging, desperate kiss, and his hips were slotted into Leonard's again, pushing, rubbing.

Jim was a talker; he monologued when he showered, muttered under his breath when he was studying, had entire one-sided conversations when he slept, and he never shut up even during sex, breathing, "Touch me, Bones--god, you _hahh_--fucking _touch me,_" and he used his grip on Leonard's hair to twist his head enough to seize Leonard's ear between his teeth and fill it with his hot, panting, tickling breaths as he repeated _touch me touch me_ _want you so bad_. Leonard did, light-headed with the frantic cadence of Jim's voice crooning filthy pleas, hitching Jim's thick sweater up enough to drag his palms across Jim's pliant skin and then down into the waistband and clenching at the firm flesh there probably hard enough to hurt. Jim was commando, Leonard noted distantly, absolutely no underwear and absolutely no shame because he'd come tonight for just one purpose, hadn't he, hard-eyed in his failure and deliberately wanton.

They worked their clothes off just enough to expose the necessary parts. Jim was in no mood for foreplay and prep beyond the most rudimentary in the form of a lubricated condom and two fingers, even if their situation had allowed for it, and his hand was hard on Leonard's cock as he pulled Leonard in for another fierce kiss that was too urgent, too desperate for grace and finesse.

They'd switched places; Jim up against the wall, his face pressed against the bricks, and Leonard had a death grip on Jim's hips where there'd be a constellation of bruises tomorrow, and he shifted enough to stick his fingers in Jim's mouth to keep him quiet because the last thing two Starfleet cadets needed was to get brought in on indecency charges. The flaps of Leonard's open coat hung across Jim's exposed skin, hiding their nakedness, pale skin all too visible against the black shadows of the alley, as Leonard pushed his way in. Jim groaned, muffled, and suddenly his wet, slick tongue was doing indecent things to Leonard's fingers, and Leonard had just enough presence of mind left from thrusting into the tightness and heat of Jim's body to wish that they were somewhere more private where Jim could repeat those sinful things on his knees to Leonard's cock, and instead he pried his other hand off the jut of Jim's hipbone and reached down for Jim's erection that'd been bobbing free and unattended. Jim cursed urgently, breathlessly, as Leonard began to stroke him in punishing time to each push, and the movements of his hips lost their graceful writhing rhythm as he tried to simultaneously rock forward into Leonard's hand and backwards into Leonard's hard, chopping thrusts, legs spreading as far as his pants allowed, knees bending to make the angle deeper.

It was perfect, fucking perfect, here in the dark shrouding his vision so Leonard could concentrate on the sensations of tight and clench and the slap of flesh on flesh, the heated wet and suction around his sensitive fingers. Jim was shaking, resting his head back against the crook of Leonard's neck and shoulder like he'd given up fighting, and he just rode Leonard's thrusts, mouth open and gasping, his hands digging into Leonard's thighs and clenching in time with every shove, his cock jerking and throbbing in Leonard's hand.

When Leonard came, it was white static like a sledgehammer to the back of the head, clenching his teeth against the strangled, harsh gasp that escaped his throat.

Jim had worked himself free by the time Leonard came back to himself and was hunched against the wall, his hand working frantically. Leonard paid no mind to the bunch of his boxers around his thighs and the way his pants were beginning to sag precariously lower, and turned Jim around to face him. Jim was chewing his lower lip, and he released it at what he saw on Leonard's face and moaned, wet-lipped and lush like the best porn star and Leonard had to slide his tongue along Jim's lower lip and lick at where the lipstick had been because no, they were something beyond friends-with-benefits, but that didn't mean that Jim was his, only his. He wrenched Jim's hand off his dick rather more forcefully than necessary and stroked it, watching Jim's expression come apart and shatter, and there was a grim satisfaction that it was _his _name on Jim's exhaled groan, no-one else's, as Jim came wet and sticky and shuddering over Leonard's hand.

Jim leaned against the wall like the world had been shaken and he was waiting for the aftershock, his face slack, his mouth soft and wet. Leonard cleaned himself up with a mostly-used tissue he found in his pocket, feeling the languor in his own body. He felt only marginally better, the horror of the day faded into the boneless relaxation and the reality of Jim's heated skin against his. He should be grateful, he knew; Jim was his best friend, his a-little-something-more friend, and Leonard shouldn't be looking for anything else. It was a hollow comfort. Leonard could understand what it was Jim got out of blazingly intense but ultimately unsatisfying encounters with strangers; there was a kind of willing forgetfulness in the base carnality of supple flesh and writhing hips, a low voice hoarsely begging for more in between grunts, and the raw chafe that presaged the soreness of tomorrow.

But Leonard had allowed Jim to break their unspoken rule--a rule meant to maintain the fragile balance that they'd made for themselves between _best friends_ and_ sex_ and _commitment_--the _I'm not your back-up anonymous fuck_ rule, but Jim would keep going back for hurried nameless fucks in dozens of grimy bars and clubs, wouldn't he. Leonard abruptly wished that he'd thought to bum an extra cigarette because the craving was back, more psychological than physical, and the weight of the paper tube between his lips would help still the restlessness of his hands that wanted only to knead Jim's skin and shake some sense into him.

He turned away back to the street instead and said, "Jim, I'm going home," over his shoulder. He half expected Jim to go back to the bar, but by the time a taxi stopped, Jim had gotten himself together and was waiting with him, stealing little hesitant glances at his face like he'd seen something raw and unfamiliar in Leonard that he'd never glimpsed before.

It didn't make the day better, but it helped. A little.


End file.
